Photo Realistic Screen Printing
How we love these jobs. Photorealistic screen printing is so much fun. It’s the process of printing a design that has the clarity of a photo.
We achieve this by separating the primary colors within the design and, then, screen printing each color one at time. Each color is mixed with all the other colors which produces a print that is almost an exact reproduction of the image… “ALMOST”. Which is why we use the term “realistic”. A limitation of screen printing is that it can only print designs at a resolution of about 55 dpi. To reproduce an design that is a 100% accurate, a resolution of 1,200 dpi is needed (DT-Film printing and DTG printing can achieve a resolution of 1,200 dpi).
However, photorealistic screen printing can achieve amazing results and it’s a perfect solution for jobs that have a highly detailed design and that require a high volume of garments. DT-Film printing and DTG Printing may have the advantage in clarity but they lose out when it comes to speed and costs. Our automatic press has the capacity to screen print 950 prints an hour. This pace (and lower ink costs) puts us in a better position to print high volume, highly detailed designs at a fraction of the cost of DT-Film, DTG and embroidery.
So why doesn’t everybody offer photorealistic screen printing?
It ain’t easy! Photorealistic designs require experience to print with any consistency. Every step of the process requires precision preparation. Separating the colors, preparing the screens and setting up the press all have strict standards that have to be met before printing. Everything from the percentage of fading in the artwork, the tension of the screens and even the pressure used to print the design have to be set to exact increments. In addition, we only use the best software and automated press on the market (M&R Equipment).
Watch our press in action as it prints a photorealistic job we provided for American Pile Driving (APE)